I want you to stop and do something for yourself. Not me, or anyone, but yourself. I want you to use every objective, self-critiquing nerve you can muster, and examine that grievance for its value in the higher state of things. Will it matter to you or anyone else in a few days, or a week, or a year? Is it harming your state of life? Is it threatening to destroy what you know and enjoy?

Is it worth being militant and combative with your peers over?

If you fail to come up with a sensible reason that would pass in a court over it, I counsel you by sensible rationality to drop it, find something that you enjoy to take up the time that venomous issue once did, and move on with your life. You will be much healthier for it. Those around you will likely be more amicable towards you for it.

We're all well aware of the cheap jokes that can be made about rationale on the internet. You don't need to share your thoughts or discoveries here, or provide testimony. Anything you do provide is just yours to share. Just stop. Think. Evaluate your grievance(s) and treat them accordingly.

Insightful, and gave this one pause to think, just well how does one make amends once they realize? Since some can shelve it, but never forget. What advice have you on this, also....curious as to what brought on this introspection inducing post, seems more philosophical than something ranty/ravy rather...refreshing in some oddly serene way

It may be less stressful to apply a "just let it go" attitude to all the minor issues, but...

Wasn't it a couple decades of that attitude that resulted in the human race losing all of its virtues? Chivalry is dead. Honor is dead. Integrity is dead. Truth is dead. Common respect is dead. People as a whole are evil, selfish, immoral creatures, and all because somewhere along the way someone decided it wasn't worth being unpopular to fight over these things.

I couldn't blame you if you hate me for arguing this with you, but I COULD blame myself if I didn't stand up and make my point today.

Witchiebunny wrote:Niko is not arguing for applying such an atitude to major issues, but to little ones like a game,which is what TF2 is.

Relevance. Sense of Scale.Need some help with those?

Games are where moral values count the MOST.

If you were fighting an actual war? Yeah. Then you can start calling people names and pulling every underhanded trick you can think of to ensure you stay alive and they die. In a war sometimes you're forced to do things too horrible to think of. But in a GAME you have NO excuse to cheat, treat your opponents poorly, or in any other way sacrifice moral values, because the only thing at stake is how much of an [expletive] you're going to look like if you DO that stuff.

When a person thinks they have to win a video-game no matter how low they have to stoop to do so, don't you think THAT person is the one who is taking the game too seriously? No? Really? You think it's the person getting angry at THAT [expletive], because the behavior of the first guy is preventing him from having fun (You know. Fun. The sole purpose of the game) who needs to chill out?

The point of my thread (and this is especially pointed to CrashFu, who has succeeded in resurrecting this thread and derailing my post with a cynically negative counterpoint) was that there is often ample reason to stop and think through things that trouble and anger you, especially with grievances with others. And instead of going on the attack, to try for understanding and comprehension, and tempering your reactions in light of said understanding.

People are disposed towards self preservation beneath their social drives, and it leads us to do cruel things. That's a given, so it's up to us if we wish to strive for anything better. If you wish to take a more worldly view, there's the ideal that understanding is the key to forging common bonds between you and those around you. It's something to strive for for personal betterment that will not come through natural progression:

That is why it is an ideal.

(locking this thread, because I know that, regardless, there's going to be a 'but actually' that steamrolls past this thread's original intention, and who knows where it will end up there)